Dissertation--Philosophische Fakultät--Köln--Universität, 2005. / Bibliogr. p. 299-317. Index.

Köln, University, Diss., 2005.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Duquesne University, 2005. / Title from document title page. Abstract included in electronic submission form. Includes bibliographical references (p. 105-110) and index.

A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of Arts, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Fine Arts. / American critic Hal Foster argues that conceptions of 'the natural' are not universal, they are historically and discursively produced, There is no unmediated presence of 'the natural' in painting. He proposes 'denaturalization' as a form of critical postmodemist aesthetic which questions universalist tendencies in contemporary cultural production" This research examines selected theories and visual. representations of 'the natural' in order to explore different ways in which Foster's notion of denaturalization may be productive in assessing the complexity of critical visual art practice in South Africa. My approach to the topic is largely fragmentary in order to reflect on and engage with the diverse terms of 'the natural' as manifest in visual art practice. To this end I discuss selected works of contemporary South African artists William Kentridge and Penelope'Siopis, While Foster's notion of denaturalization is productive in trying to engage with"critical issues' of art practice it is difficulr, if not impossible to determine if cenaln works conform with either his notion of a postmodernism of resistance or postmodernism of reaction. I will also explore the notion of denaturalization with reference to my practical work. / Andrew Chakane 2018

This dissertation focuses on the animated, charcoal, hand-drawn films of William Kentridge‟s Drawings for Projection series (1989—2003). At the beginning of this study, Kentridge‟s films are positioned as a dialectic of self and memory as embodied in a post-colonial South African setting. The series itself was selected as being representative of his artistic oeuvre. They are a closed-ended narrative, using a ground-breaking animation technique, created by the artist himself (Christov-Bakargiev 1998; Godby 1982). They were made by Kentridge during a specific South African cultural and historical period: beginning with Johannesburg, 2nd Greatest City after Paris, made in 1989 at the height of apartheid; through to Tide Table, made in 2003 at the beginning of post post-apartheid South Africa. The hypothesis presented is that Kentridge‟s films have memory as their main theme. Memory itself takes different forms, and the discourse of memory deals with, for instance: memorialisation; repressed memories; traumatic memories; the unconscious and memories; and “postmemory”. How he depicts memories of his own and those of others is at the centre of this research. Using qualitative research methodology, with contextualisation (socio-historical and cultural) and comparative studies (apartheid and the Holocaust; different artistic representations of memory, for example Pascal Croci and William Kentridge; and Anselm Kiefer and William Kentridge) being part of the research design, this thesis has sought to substantiate this hypothesis. Further substantiation and clarification has been expounded by referencing seminal works in the field, such as those of Sigmund Freud (1899: “screen memories”; 1917: trauerarbeit); Roland Barthes (1981: the punctum / spacio-temporal continuum); Pierre Nora (1989: “lieux de mémoiré” / “sites of memory”); Henri Raczymow (1994: “memoire trouée” / “memory shot through with holes”); Richard Terdiman (1993: poesis); Marianne Hirsch (1997: “postmemory”); and Hayden White (1996: historical metafiction); among others. There have already been numerous references to how William Kentridge has depicted the ephemeral nature of memory / memories (Boris 2001; Cameron, Christov-Bakargiev and Coetzee, 1999; Christov-Bakargiev 1998; Sitas 2001). However an in-depth, hermeneutic, comparative analysis has not yet been undertaken. This study is therefore significant in that it explicates William Kentridge‟s works, making the following contributions: to the scholarship on Kentridge‟s work; to a South African perspective to the growing field of trauma studies; and to the apartheid and post-apartheid reflections on re-remembering and forgetting, memorialisation, forgiveness and guilt. Through socio-cultural and historical comparisons as well as artistic contrasts, the films themselves are acknowledged as an important source of reference of South African society. They are a documentation of life lived during apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. / Department of Communication Science / D.Litt. et Phil.

This thesis is structured around investigating the philosophical and aesthetic problematics, politics, and possibilities of representing the past for the purposes of demythifying the present as well as commemorating the losses of history, as explored in the artworks of Anselm Kiefer, Christian Boltanski, William Kentridge and Santu Mofokeng. The first chapter begins with Theodor Adorno’s philosophical understanding of myth and history: how he is influenced by and then develops Karl Marx’s critique of society, Sigmund Freud’s critique of reason and its subject, and particularly Walter Benjamin’s ideas of history as catastrophe, the role of the historian and his messianic materialism. The second section looks at Theodor Adorno’s dialectic of art and society: immanent criticism in aesthetic practice, mimesis, and the shift in conceptions of allegory from Walter Benjamin’s understanding to that of Jacques Derrida. The last section of the chapter looks at Jacques Derrida’s poststructuralist theories against boundary-fixing, within that the ethical relation to the ‘other’ and the theorist/artist as psychic exile. The second chapter deals with the politics of remembrance and representation — beginning with Theodor Adorno’s historic interpretation of the Mosaic law against the making of images and Jean-Francois Lyotard on the im-possibility of representing the unrepresentable. The chapter is divided in two parts between the post-Holocaust European artists Anselm Kiefer and Christian Boltanski, and the post-apartheid South African artists William Kentridge and Santu Mofokeng. It explores, within these artists’ specific contexts, their formal and philosophical approaches to myth and history, and the problematics of image-making, representing the unrepresentable, and commemorating the immemorial. The thesis concludes by considering different conceptions of melancholia as they relate to these artists: the Freudian psychoanalytic approach, Benjamin’s notions of the artist-genius, and Julia Kristeva’s Lacanian reading of the humanist melancholic, concluding with the mythic-historical Kaballist notion of melancholia as the historical burden or responsibility to commemorate loss.

This dissertation focuses on the animated, charcoal, hand-drawn films of William Kentridge‟s Drawings for Projection series (1989—2003). At the beginning of this study, Kentridge‟s films are positioned as a dialectic of self and memory as embodied in a post-colonial South African setting. The series itself was selected as being representative of his artistic oeuvre. They are a closed-ended narrative, using a ground-breaking animation technique, created by the artist himself (Christov-Bakargiev 1998; Godby 1982). They were made by Kentridge during a specific South African cultural and historical period: beginning with Johannesburg, 2nd Greatest City after Paris, made in 1989 at the height of apartheid; through to Tide Table, made in 2003 at the beginning of post post-apartheid South Africa. The hypothesis presented is that Kentridge‟s films have memory as their main theme. Memory itself takes different forms, and the discourse of memory deals with, for instance: memorialisation; repressed memories; traumatic memories; the unconscious and memories; and “postmemory”. How he depicts memories of his own and those of others is at the centre of this research. Using qualitative research methodology, with contextualisation (socio-historical and cultural) and comparative studies (apartheid and the Holocaust; different artistic representations of memory, for example Pascal Croci and William Kentridge; and Anselm Kiefer and William Kentridge) being part of the research design, this thesis has sought to substantiate this hypothesis. Further substantiation and clarification has been expounded by referencing seminal works in the field, such as those of Sigmund Freud (1899: “screen memories”; 1917: trauerarbeit); Roland Barthes (1981: the punctum / spacio-temporal continuum); Pierre Nora (1989: “lieux de mémoiré” / “sites of memory”); Henri Raczymow (1994: “memoire trouée” / “memory shot through with holes”); Richard Terdiman (1993: poesis); Marianne Hirsch (1997: “postmemory”); and Hayden White (1996: historical metafiction); among others. There have already been numerous references to how William Kentridge has depicted the ephemeral nature of memory / memories (Boris 2001; Cameron, Christov-Bakargiev and Coetzee, 1999; Christov-Bakargiev 1998; Sitas 2001). However an in-depth, hermeneutic, comparative analysis has not yet been undertaken. This study is therefore significant in that it explicates William Kentridge‟s works, making the following contributions: to the scholarship on Kentridge‟s work; to a South African perspective to the growing field of trauma studies; and to the apartheid and post-apartheid reflections on re-remembering and forgetting, memorialisation, forgiveness and guilt. Through socio-cultural and historical comparisons as well as artistic contrasts, the films themselves are acknowledged as an important source of reference of South African society. They are a documentation of life lived during apartheid and post-apartheid South Africa. / Department of Communication Science / D.Litt. et Phil.

South African artist William Kentridge's (b. 1955) work frequently employs optical tools, such as the stereoscope, to highlight the contingency and instability of witness. These visual tools become metaphors for the process of historicization in post-apartheid South Africa. Kentridge is best known for his animations that are filmed by drawing with charcoal, photographing, erasing, redrawing and photographing again, leaving a palimpsest of previous traces on the paper's surface. Kentridge's prints, drawings, puppetry, theatrical projects and performances are also addressed in (un)Fixing the Eye. Kentridge's vast array of works narrates a history critical of the narrow and objective history of apartheid constructed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's (TRC) official report. Furthermore, the metaphors suggested by Kentridge's optical tools undermine the ideology that apartheid is in the past. It suggests the necessity of colonial narratives as well as issues of class and materialism, within apartheid as traces that are very much part of the present. Each chapter of (un)Fixing the Eye uses a separate optical device to explore the narration of history in South Africa. To do so I draw from an eclectic group of thinkers: psychoanalytic models of melancholia and reparation, Jacques Derrida's work on forgiveness, Hayden White's theories of narrative and Jonathan Crary's work on optical tools and perception. Chapter one argues there is an ironic and impossible condition of forgiveness and truth in the TRC. Using Kentridge's Ubu Tells the Truth and its specific invocation of Dziga Vertov's realist 'kino-eye' and Alfred Jarry's brutal and absurd King Ubu as metaphors of absurdity and truth represented through the movie camera, this chapter argues that there is an impossibility of truth in the TRC. Chapter two reads Kentridge's Felix in Exile as a materialist response to the naturalized and a historical landscape tradition in South Africa. Felix's use of the theodolite and sextant as mapping and navigation tools highlights colonial mapping practices and the history of property ownership, particularly in the mining industry. In this way these optical tools link colonialism and mining alongside of the violence rendered in the film, unearthing a history of colonialism and class issues in apartheid narratives. Chapter three uses X-rays and CAT scans as metaphors for the testimony in the TRC, as both require an expert to decode and contextualize the testimony. Kentridge's films during the TRC use medical imaging technologies that are ambiguous and uncertain within the TRC's discourse of truth. Chapter four returns to the camera, this time as a colonial image in Namibia, arguing its usage in Black Box/Chambre Noir creates a melancholic relationship between Enlightenment Europe and colonial Africa. In this melancholia, Kentridge's history of the 20th century's first genocide in Namibia links a tremendous number of global histories. The focus in optical discourses, particularly the stereoscope is not new in Kentridge's work but (un)Fixing the Eye considers a number of tools that have not previously been a part of this optical work in Kentridge's art. It expands the political scope of Kentridge's work to include colonialism and class issues, insisting on their place in the current political landscape. Ultimately this project argues that Kentridge's work through a destabilized optical apparatus works both formally and allegorically as a way of conceiving of narrative and ideological critique in an expanded sense from the narrow confines set by the TRC.

Thesis (MPhil)--Stellenbosch University, 2012. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Contemporary South African artist William Kentridge’s experimentation with the visual strategies of European modernism and nineteenth-century optical devices, particularly the fragmented figure and shadow perception, has been well documented in contemporary cultural discourse. It is, however, something for which he is often criticized. In this dissertation I will demonstrate that Kentridge’s enduring interest in European modernism and the processes of human perception are in fact inextricably linked. I will further argue that the significance of this connection resides in that they are both critical visual strategies for exploring the fragmented nature of a postmodern postcolonial subjectivity in a South African contemporary cultural context. Kentridge’s concern with the subjective nature of the construction of knowledge, of the space between seeing and knowing, memory and reality, is a central motif in his art practice and is understood to be a personal attempt to reconcile his present with the past, South Africa’s colonial history with Western history and modernism with postmodernism. Shaped by theories of altermodernity, neomodern anthropology, and the relationship between the observer and ‘the gaze’ in contemporary discourse, my dissertation will thus also argue that Kentridge’s interrogation of the fragmented nature of human subjectivity could be regarded as being ethnographic and Gothic in nature. His multi-channel video installation, I am not me, the horse is not mine (2008), will provide the key visual text for my argument, for it is in this artwork that the inseparability of these concerns are best exemplified, particularly in his experimentation with fragmentation, the Russian avant-garde and shadows. I conclude this research with a discussion of my own creative work, which is a re-imagining and critical investigation of my maternal grandfather’s archive of late eighteenth-century family silhouette portraits. As such, I interrogate notions of subjectivity, human perception and an ‘altermodern’ anthropological quest through a personal lens, in the context of the broader concerns raised by Kentridge’s work. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: Die kontemporêre Suid-Afrikaanse kunstenaar William Kentridge se eksperimentering met die visuele strategieë van die Europese modernisme en negentiende-eeuse optiese toestelle, veral die gefragmenteerde figuur en skaduwee persepsie, is goed gedokumenteer in die hedendaagse kulturele debat. Dit is egter ook waarvoor hy dikwels gekritiseer word. In hierdie verhandeling sal ek aantoon dat Kentridge se volgehoue belangstelling in die Europese modernisme en die prossese van menslike waarneming onlosmaaklik aan mekaar verbind is. Ek sal verder aanvoer dat die betekenis van hierdie verband daarin geleë is dat albei krities belangrike visuele strategieë is waardeur die gefragmenteerde aard van 'n post-moderne, post-koloniale subjektiwiteit in ‘n Suid-Afrikaanse kontemporêre kulturele konteks verken kan word. Kentridge se besorgheid oor die subjektiewe aard van die konstruksie van kennis, van die ruimte tussen ‘om te sien’ en ‘om te weet’, herinneringe en die werklikheid, is ‘n sentrale motief in sy kuns. Dit word beskou as 'n persoonlike poging tot versoening tussen sy hede en die verlede, Suid-Afrika se koloniale geskiedenis en die Westerse geskiedenis, en modernisme en post-modernisme. My verhandeling is gebaseer op die teorieë van alter-moderniteit, neo-moderne-antropologie, en die verhouding tussen die waarnemer en ‘die staar na’ in kontemporêre debat. Ek neem dus ook standpunt in dat Kentridge se ontleding van die gefragmenteerde aard van die menslike subjektiwiteit beskou kan word as etnografies en Goties van aard. Sy multi-kanaal video-installasie, I am not me, the horse is not mine (2008), sal die sleutel visuele teks in my beredenering wees, aangesien dit is in hierdie kunswerk is dat die onlosmaaklikheid van hierdie verskynsels die beste beliggaam word, en veral ook in sy eksperimentering met fragmentering, die Russiese avant-garde en skaduwees. Ek sluit die navorsing af met ‘n bespreking van my eie kreatiewe werk, wat ‘n herinterpretasie en kritiese ondersoek van my grootvader aan moederskant se argief van die laat agtiende-eeu se familie silhoeët portrette. As sodanig, sal ek, in die konteks van die breë knelpunte wat in Kentridge se werk voorkom, die begrippe van subjektiwiteit, menslike waarneming en ‘n ‘alter-moderne’ antropologiese strewe deur ‘n persoonlike lens ontleed.

Key words: William Hogarth Exhibition; Hogarth in Johannesburg (1987-1988) Series; A Rake’s Progress, Marriage-a-la-Mode and Industry and Idleness Artists; Robert Hodgins Deborah Bell William Kentridge William Hogarth Caversham Press, KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa Printmaking Printmaking in South Africa Resistance art Narratology, narrative, discourse, story, plot, Transference of narratives Sequential art narrative and comics This dissertation considers the prints by South African artists, William Kentridge, Deborah Bell, and Robert Hodgins for the Hogarth in Johannesburg exhibition (1987) in the context of William Hogarth’s historical suites of prints referred to in the title of the exhibition, and contemporary theories about Sequential Art and Narrative. Produced for the artists at The Caversham Press of Malcolm Christian in KwaZulu-Natal, particular emphasis is placed on the images created by Deborah Bell, Robert Hodgins and William Kentridge (such as Industry and Idleness, Marriage-a-la-mode and A Rake’s Progress), and shown in their combined exhibition Hogarth in Johannesburg, in 1987. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 2012.